"},{"ID":48671,"user_firstname":"James","user_lastname":"Jones","nickname":"James_Jones","user_nicename":"james_jones","display_name":"James Jones","user_email":"James_Jones@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2020-06-18 14:33:24","user_description":"Product Owner for ArcGIS AllSource. Lover of all things python, link analysis, and intelligence analysis.","user_avatar":"
"},{"ID":331272,"user_firstname":"Stephen","user_lastname":"Kredel","nickname":"Stephen Kredel","user_nicename":"skredel","display_name":"Stephen Kredel","user_email":"skredel@esri.com","user_url":"","user_registered":"2023-02-06 18:23:52","user_description":"Stephen Kredel is a Product Engineer on the ArcGIS AllSource team. He joined Esri in 2022 and focuses on technical writing and help documentation. He has four years experience as a Geospatial Intelligence Imagery Analyst in the U.S. Army and earned his B.A. in history from the University of Redlands.","user_avatar":"
"}],"short_description":"This blog is the first in a multipart blog about using, analyzing, and visualizing datetime data in intelligence analysis. ","flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"This blog is the first in a multipart blog about using, analyzing, and visualizing datetime data in intelligence analysis. This first part introduces you to some concepts, helps solve common data preparation issues, and walks you through time-enabling layers.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"
It is not uncommon to receive intelligence data from a vendor or other source that includes one or more fields of date, time, or both. These fields might be a sensor log time stamp, when a report was submitted, when a feature was last edited, or when an event is planned to start and end. The values in these fields may contain both a date and a time or just one of the two. Additionally, the date and time may be separated into two fields. In this section, you will learn some concepts of how dates and times are patterned and the possible variations you might come across.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":{"ID":1917452,"id":1917452,"title":"Datetime fields in feature attribute table","filename":"Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","filesize":135053,"url":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/products\/allsource\/analytics\/spatiotemporal-methods-with-arcgis-allsource-part-1-time-enabling-layers\/datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table","alt":"Datetime fields in a feature attribute table","author":"331272","description":"","caption":"","name":"datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":1917432,"date":"2023-04-26 22:28:52","modified":"2023-04-26 22:29:29","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/png","type":"image","subtype":"png","icon":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":600,"height":274,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table-213x200.png","thumbnail-width":213,"thumbnail-height":200,"medium":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","medium-width":464,"medium-height":212,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","medium_large-width":600,"medium_large-height":274,"large":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","large-width":600,"large-height":274,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","1536x1536-width":600,"1536x1536-height":274,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","2048x2048-width":600,"2048x2048-height":274,"card_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","card_image-width":600,"card_image-height":274,"wide_image":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/arcgis-blog\/app\/uploads\/2023\/04\/Datetime-fields-in-feature-attribute-table.png","wide_image-width":600,"wide_image-height":274}},"image_position":"center","orientation":"horizontal","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"
Date fields typically provide the year, month, and date of month, but not necessarily in that order. (I say \u201ctypically\u201d because there are many ways to describe a date.) This is often referred to as the Julian date, but it is more correctly the ordinal date. You will also see a typical date pattern in the United States as 6\/8\/2020 for June 8, 2020. Elsewhere, including many countries in Europe, you will see the pattern 8\/6\/2020 for the same date. There are also many national and international standards for specifying dates, such as International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 8601: \u201cAdditionally, since the beginning of computing, dates have been changed for storage efficiency\u2014specifically, Unix time (or POSIX time), which is the number of seconds since January 1, 1970.\u201d Using the previous example of June 8, 2020, UNIX time would be 1591574400. Representing a date as the number of seconds in UNIX time blurs the lines between date and time.<\/p>\n
Time fields also have their share of different representation patterns. You will find they are shared in a typical layout of hours, minutes, and seconds. But like with dates, the formatting can vary significantly. Some common variations in time use a 12-hour or 24-hour clock, time zone definition differences, or even number of seconds since midnight.\u00a0You will find a typical time pattern in the United States as 1:45:22 p.m., meaning one forty-five and twenty-two seconds in the afternoon. A 24-hour clock uses the same pattern, but a different number range for hours, with 13:45:22 meaning thirteen forty-five and twenty-two seconds (and sometimes as thirteen hundred forty-five). Combining date and time gives you a more complete way to sequence events that happened in the past, are happening now, or will happen in the future. ArcGIS AllSource supports several datetime format patterns. Later in this article, you will learn a few methods for converting datetime from other format patterns.<\/p>\n
A few of the supported datetime format patterns are as follows:<\/p>\n
Y = year, M = month, D = day, h = hour, m = minute, s = second<\/p>\n
Typical data contains event information as either single datetime events or two datetime range events. Single-date events store a single datetime field representing when something occurred. You might store a datetime of when a record was last updated, or when a device was at a specific x,y location. Datetime range events have two dates for the start datetime and the ending datetime. These are events that have a duration, which means they last for a certain period of time. For example, if you are scheduling a meeting that starts at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 10:00 a.m., it lasts two hours.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"
While the example datetime format patterns listed above are the target format used by ArcGIS AllSource, this isn\u2019t necessarily the pattern in which time will be stored in your source data. To time-enable these fields, you will need to convert the field into a supported format. This section discusses common issues in preparing datetime fields for use in ArcGIS AllSource.<\/p>\n
In addition to date field types, both string and numeric fields are supported. If you find that the field doesn\u2019t translate nicely or is in a different format, you can use some of the methods below to convert the field to a new datetime field type to fit a new format pattern. Specifically, the\u00a0Convert Time Field<\/strong>\u00a0tool will work.<\/p>\n It is not uncommon to have a date stored in one field and a corresponding time stored in a separate field. These can be used independently, but it is a better practice to store them in the same field. Any of the visualizations or analysis done individually can be done on the combined field. You can concatenate the two fields into a single field using the\u00a0Add Field<\/strong>\u00a0and\u00a0Calculate Field<\/strong>\u00a0geoprocessing tools. Say you have a datefield and a separate timefield. To combine them, do the following:<\/p>\n datetime.datetime.strptime(\u201c{} {}\u201d.format(!datefield!, !timefield!), \u201c%Y\/%m\/%d %H:%M:%S\u201d)<\/p>\n This expression uses a Python library datetime to read the incoming datefield and timefield and pass them out in a supported format. The format patterns can be configured to output several options, but not all are supported by ArcGIS AllSource.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"What if my date is in one field and times are in another field?<\/em><\/h3>\n
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